Perceived justice and creativity in crowdsourcing communities: Empirical evidence from China

Abstract

Crowdsourcing has provided firms with a new way to involve their users with innovation activities. By outsourcing innovation-related tasks to huge external crowds, companies can access diverse creative ideas. Despite the great potential of crowdsourcing communities, it remains unclear how to create the necessary community environment to drive the creative ideas of participants. The present research investigates the effects of community fairness on the creativity of participants in crowdsourcing communities. Justice theory indicates that three types of justice are positively related to the creativity of participants: distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice. Our research model is generally supported by a survey of 238 participants in one of the biggest crowdsourcing communities in China. We find that the three types of justice influence participants’ creativity through different mechanisms. Furthermore, idea generation and idea cooperation mediate the relationship between distributive justice, procedural justice and creative performance. Our study provides both theoretical and practical implications.